A Couple of Thoughts About Love

Love is the most beautiful and also the most challenging topic to write about. Why? Because there are so many misconceptions, so many false interpretations about love out there. Sorting them out in one blog post is almost impossible. But to shed light on a few dimensions that are essential and inspiring – that’s what I’m trying to do here.

Common Misconceptions

Most of the time, love is connected to a relationship to another person. This belief is closely connected to the idea of the “perfect man” or the “perfect woman”. Finding this perfect person, happiness seems to be guaranteed. This is what daily trivia and many Hollywood blockbusters are all about…

Let’s uncover a few false belief systems.

Happiness comes from within, it should never depend on another person. If you cannot be happy with yourself, how should you ever be happy with another person? Instead, happiness is a state of being, it’s an attitude. It’s being aware of the fact that most of the time, it’s not what happens to us. It’s more about how we respond to what happens to us, and that’s our choice. Happiness comes when our heart, our mind and our actions are well aligned. Therefore happiness doesn’t depend on another person.

“Love has nothing to do with the other. A loving person simply loves, just as an alive person breathes and drinks and eats and sleeps. Exactly like that, a really alive person, a loving person, loves.”
— Osho

Love is not something to be projected to another person. Instead, love is an energy flowing within us. It’s a natural function. We are born with love as we are born with trust, but we need to develop both on our own.

Demanding perfection is another misconception. Look around how many people take others for granted, showing no gratitude, no awareness at all. Another attitude that’s based on false belief systems, how men and women should behave in a relationship and in a certain society. Those stories were told to us, over and over again. What’s the good thing with that? Stories can be changed. Develop a new level of awareness and appreciate what a person who loves you, is doing for you. Nothing is self-evident. Love needs a climate of gratitude, love needs a non-demanding atmosphere to grow.

Another false belief is to focus on how to get love. It’s closely related to the perfect man and perfect woman belief. How to get to this person? Why not changing the approach fundamentally?
Why not start giving?

“That’s how love grows. Give, and don’t wait to see how much you can grab. Yes, it comes, it comes a thousand fold, but it comes naturally. It comes on its own, there is no need to demand it.”
–Osho

Getting rid of those misconceptions is a “must have” challenge at some points in our lives. Those challenges come in iterations, triggered by people and life events, we were subconsciously looking for – to grow. These are experiences we have to make. Often, we discover ourselves in the other person in different forms and shapes. People who love are often a mirror for each other – a mirror that can be pretty challenging from time to time, a mirror that allows us to grow to a next level of understanding. Growth only happens, if we are open to it. Growth only happens, if we learn from what we see in the mirror. Every time you will learn a bit more, and you will get a deeper understanding. Now and then, that’s a painful way to grow, but a necessary one. The pain of growth is decreasing in each iteration, and the joy, your overflowing heart of love is increasing. A beautiful journey of personal, spiritual growth.

Growing this way, love is experienced and practiced differently. It becomes a state of being, it becomes a practice that goes way beyond relationships to other people, it’s becomes the core value of being, of living your life. Then, you are love. Two fundamental consequences can experienced along this journey:

Love transforms

As mentioned above, love is not something to be searched for in another being to combat loneliness or unhappiness. Instead, love is in your heart, but it needs to be unleashed, it needs to be liberated from misconceptions. Love has a tremendous transformational power. It allows you to touch your inner completeness. It allows you to find the key – for whatever you are seeking for – within you. That’s discovering aloneness, which means nothing else than to be complete.

“Real love is not a search to combat loneliness. Real love is to transform loneliness into aloneness, to help the other.”
–Osho

Love’s transformational power is so essential to understand, because it connects all areas of our lives. Love is our life energy that connects the dots between the personal life and the professional life.

Understanding love as being love is what enables creativity, and personal transformation. Being love is the prerequisite to your creativity, to develop your creativity to another level, where creative energy is just flowing through you. And that doesn’t come from many activities, it comes more from meaningful actions. That includes to accept that some things just happen and that not everything can be planned, done and controlled. This is what our mind always wants to do – to control. Let your heart lead your mind, but not the other way around. If so, your mind could control too much, your mind could prevent you from experiencing this amazing journey of personal, spiritual growth of being love.

Love strengthens freedom

Finally, experiencing love as being love – love and freedom are two sides of the same coin.

“Love allows freedom; not only allows, but strengthens freedom. And anything that destroys freedom is not love. It must be something else. Love and freedom go together, they are two wings of the same bird.”–Osho

Experiencing love as a state of being, as a transformational energy is key to what we need to change in this century. Experiencing ourselves as spiritual beings, getting rid of love misconceptions is essential to master this century’s challenges, regarding all aspects of our existence on Earth.

We need leadership that allows playfulness, leadership that leverages people’s individual creativity, leadership that engages people to drive transformation towards a better future. We need leadership that is based on authenticity and integrity, we need leadership that leverages the power of communities and networks. We need leadership that is based on freedom, not on driving fear. This kind of leadership should be based on love…